Calling all SEO experts.

I have been running my website for about one year and I am fed-up of my terrible page ranking.

I have read allot about SEO, most I understood and some not so much. I will elaborate below all the changes I have done to date. Even with all the changes I have done below, my page rankings and site traffic is still horrible!

I run a Wordpress website, so for Wordpress I have done the following:

• Installed Yoast WPSEO. I have read numerous articles and watched countless videos, I am confident that I have the upmost configuration.
• I have installed a SEO image optimizer.
• Yoast Google analytics, also installed.

To improve page speed, I have:

• I have installed an image compressor.
• I have installed a caching program
• I have installed a database optimizer.

The only thing I haven't done to improve page speed is signup for a CDN.

As far as content is concerned, I produce good content and use Yoast to use the correct keywords for my content. I add content to my website on a daily basis.

I share my content on Social medias, Facebook, Twitter, Google+

I have a personal and business page for Facebook, Twitter and Google+

This leads me to backlinks! I know this plays a major role, however I don't know how to proceed to create good Backlinks.

I could really use and would definitely appreciate your comments and guidance; to be honest I think I was getting better page ranking with a vanilla installation of Wordpress.

Well, Yoast doesn't add much on-site SEO to a site, most of the features are SEO fluff. There's also Yoast features like adding noindex and nofollow to parts of the site that can seriously damage your site SEO wise. Really concerning so many people think Yoast SEO is awesome!

Mobile is 27/100 that's shit! I've checked that test a dozen times over a month and EVERYTIME it reports the "Reduce Server Response Time" issue, that means the server is running slow for some reason and page speed is a Google ranking factor.

The image, database and caching optimization you mention are all good steps. Have you confirmed it's impact using the PageSpeed Insights tool I linked above?

On sharing your content over social media I've not seen any evidence this has any direct SEO value.

Facebook for example is just another website and it's links are all nofollow and we know nofollow stops SEO benefit passing through links. For there to be direct SEO benefit Google would have to treat Facebook as a special case. Not only has Google said they don't treat social media activity in a special way, Facebook is a competitor to Google, Facebook can block Googlebot at any time, doesn't make sense for Google to use Facebook as a direct ranking factor any more than it would using Warrior Forum as a direct ranking factor.

Backlinks are still very important, more important than on-site SEO. My preferred way to build them is link bait, give your users something worth linking to.

Well first and foremost, thank-you for thanking the time to respond. I did do lots of research on my own, however getting your advice helps me.

I read other post and see many senior members stat that the will stop answering “newbie” questions, I feel that is a shame because I am sure they have lots of valid experience they could share. But on the other hand, I can’t blame them, to have the same questions asked over and over again, can become tedious.

First, PageSpeed Insights, being a newb, never heard of it before. Ran my site, scored 75/100 but it still showed me there are areas I can still improve, so thank-you for that.

Yoast, well… Being new to WP and SEO, at least it pushed me to learn about the importance about SEO structure, I can say that much for it. I configured Yoast based on articles I read as stated above, but I see SEO-Dave point. Now my only concern is, how valid where those articles, am I really optimized the correct way?

Does anyone here know of a “Valid article” on Yoast optimization?

I think I have to concentrate my efforts about learning Backlinks, I am totally lost on this subject.

Example,

Exchanging links with a website that ranks higher than you, is that considered a good backlink?

I think you missed my point on Yoast, you'll find loads of Yoast tutorials explaining which settings to use for awesome SEO, but they are wrong.

Yoast doesn't add much SEO to a site.

The only useful feature that can potentially increase rankings is the Yoast title tag. By adding a Yoast title tag WordPress will have two keyphrases to work with rather than one.

With 99.99% of themes WordPress will use the original WordPress post title for all internal links anchor text unless you are running a rubbish theme which uses anchor text like "Continue Reading" for internal links. WordPress will also use it for the main header of an article, if it's a reasonably well built theme it will be in an H1 header.

The Yoast title tag will be used for one thing, the title tag of the post, that's it.

So if you have a post with post title

Why Yoast Sucks at SEO

And add the Yoast title tag

Yoast SEO Review

The majority of the on-site SEO (internal links anchor text, H1 header etc...) will still be using "Why Yoast Sucks at SEO".

So the main on-site SEO is still reliant on the WordPress post title you set, not the Yoast title tag.

All the other Yoast SEO features are fluff, breadcrumbs are not a killer SEO feature, sitemap not a killer SEO feature, meta tags not a killer SEO feature....

Don't get me wrong, Yoast has some nice features, but their SEO impact is minimal at best and some cause serious damage.

Other than the Yoast title tag which 99.99% of themes DO NOT take advantage of, Yoast features are fluff SEO, they do not increase rankings.

If SEO theme developers knew what they were doing they could use the Yoast title tag for internal links, for the H1 header etc... but they don't. I only know of one theme which does, that's the theme I developed. Was easy to use the Yoast title tag for internal links etc...

Yoast can also cause serious SEO damage, noindex and nofollow are damaging features, there's lots of Yoast tutorials which advise noindexing tags and categories, that's SEO nuts! To use Yoast or other SEO plugins you really need to understand SEO to not feck up your sites SEO. I've seen loads of sites damage their rankings by using the Yoast and similar plugins incorrectly.

You are right to concentrate on backlinks, the reason why the Yoast domain has decent rankings despite rubbish on-site SEO, crap loads of backlinks, not the plugin or the Genesis theme framework (that's an SEO joke).

I think you missed my point on Yoast, you'll find loads of Yoast tutorials explaining which settings to use for awesome SEO, but they are wrong.

Yoast doesn't add much SEO to a site.

The only useful feature that can potentially increase rankings is the Yoast title tag. By adding a Yoast title tag WordPress will have two keyphrases to work with rather than one.

With 99.99% of themes WordPress will use the original WordPress post title for all internal links anchor text unless you are running a rubbish theme which uses anchor text like "Continue Reading" for internal links. WordPress will also use it for the main header of an article, if it's a reasonably well built theme it will be in an H1 header.

The Yoast title tag will be used for one thing, the title tag of the post, that's it.

So if you have a post with post title

Why Yoast Sucks at SEO

And add the Yoast title tag

Yoast SEO Review

The majority of the on-site SEO (internal links anchor text, H1 header etc...) will still be using "Why Yoast Sucks at SEO".

So the main on-site SEO is still reliant on the WordPress post title you set, not the Yoast title tag.

All the other Yoast SEO features are fluff, breadcrumbs are not a killer SEO feature, sitemap not a killer SEO feature, meta tags not a killer SEO feature....

Don't get me wrong, Yoast has some nice features, but their SEO impact is minimal at best and some cause serious damage.

Other than the Yoast title tag which 99.99% of themes DO NOT take advantage of, Yoast features are fluff SEO, they do not increase rankings.

If SEO theme developers knew what they were doing they could use the Yoast title tag for internal links, for the H1 header etc... but they don't. I only know of one theme which does, that's the theme I developed. Was easy to use the Yoast title tag for internal links etc...

Yoast can also cause serious SEO damage, noindex and nofollow are damaging features, there's lots of Yoast tutorials which advise noindexing tags and categories, that's SEO nuts! To use Yoast or other SEO plugins you really need to understand SEO to not feck up your sites SEO. I've seen loads of sites damage their rankings by using the Yoast and similar plugins incorrectly.

You are right to concentrate on backlinks, the reason why the Yoast domain has decent rankings despite rubbish on-site SEO, crap loads of backlinks, not the plugin or the Genesis theme framework (that's an SEO joke).

Backlinks are still more important than on-site SEO.

David

If WP was designed properly (with all their author / date archives and all that other useless stuff) we didn't have a need for Yoast. Completely ridiculous that there's no setting in WP to simply disable it, but wait Yoast has, so it ain't that bad.

No need to noindex tags btw, just don't use them then there is also nothing to noindex/nofollow.

Personally I'm hugely annoyed by the category uncategorized that always gets indexed, I don't even use posts on most of my sites anymore, only pages, but that one category always stays, any easy way to get rid of it without having to noindex it?

If WP was designed properly (with all their author / date archives and all that other useless stuff) we didn't have a need for Yoast. Completely ridiculous that there's no setting in WP to simply disable it, but wait Yoast has, so it ain't that bad.

No need to noindex tags btw, just don't use them then there is also nothing to noindex/nofollow.

Personally I'm hugely annoyed by the category uncategorized that always gets indexed, I don't even use posts on most of my sites anymore, only pages, but that one category always stays, any easy way to get rid of it without having to noindex it?

Yes the Uncategorized category is irritating.

2 solutions.

Edit the category (including slug) and change it to something useful.

Or set another category as the default category and delete the Uncategorized category.

Ahh, just realized you aren't adding any posts. As far as I'm aware you can't run WordPress without one category. As you run with no posts I'd rename to something useful.

Though if you have no posts how is it being indexed, shouldn't be any link to it? Are the themes you use still linking to empty categories? I assume you delete the Hello post so there are no posts on the site.

I wouldn't build a large WordPress site without categories, they make passing link benefit around the site easy. With only Pages you'll have to manually link hundreds of pages together. Fine if you build small micro niche sites, but not big ones.

If you noindex parts of a site it means you aren't fully utilizing your internal link benefit. the best approach is don't add archives to your site you don't want indexing. I never add the monthly archives widget or the calendar widget to a site, I don't create tags as a general rule and only create categories I want Google to index.

I have SERPs for categories. Just started building a new site, plan to build a huge site (will take years) and expect it will need well over 50 categories. I'll optimize each category for a major SERP and add some unique text to the top of the category (theme feature) and expect long term some of the categories will rank for at least semi-competitive SERPs.

What do WordPress users think the categories are for from an SEO perspective? I see them as a way to easily distribute link benefit through the site and they are webpages that target possible SERPs.

Or set another category as the default category and delete the Uncategorized category.

Ahh, just realized you aren't adding any posts. As far as I'm aware you can't run WordPress without one category. As you run with no posts I'd rename to something useful.

Though if you have no posts how is it being indexed, shouldn't be any link to it? Are the themes you use still linking to empty categories? I assume you delete the Hello post so there are no posts on the site.

I wouldn't build a large WordPress site without categories, they make passing link benefit around the site easy. With only Pages you'll have to manually link hundreds of pages together. Fine if you build small micro niche sites, but not big ones.

If you noindex parts of a site it means you aren't fully utilizing your internal link benefit. the best approach is don't add archives to your site you don't want indexing. I never add the monthly archives widget or the calendar widget to a site, I don't create tags as a general rule and only create categories I want Google to index.

I have SERPs for categories. Just started building a new site, plan to build a huge site (will take years) and expect it will need well over 50 categories. I'll optimize each category for a major SERP and add some unique text to the top of the category (theme feature) and expect long term some of the categories will rank for at least semi-competitive SERPs.

What do WordPress users think the categories are for from an SEO perspective? I see them as a way to easily distribute link benefit through the site and they are webpages that target possible SERPs.

David

I build my sites one time, I don't keep on adding content.

My pages function as categories, that way I don't have to pull any tricks with additional plugins or code to make the categories function as a page. So we have the homepage that links out to several product reviews and informative articles, and then we have some top 10 list pages that function as categories to link out to the individual reviews.

Even when I do use posts I don't use the category system.

There is a simple trick to make categories completely editable by copying and renaming the category.php file to category-nameofcategory.php but that always comes without any font attributes, tried to fix that one time but after hours of trying and searching and editing css files I gave up.

If WP was designed properly (with all their author / date archives and all that other useless stuff) we didn't have a need for Yoast. Completely ridiculous that there's no setting in WP to simply disable it, but wait Yoast has, so it ain't that bad.

No need to noindex tags btw, just don't use them then there is also nothing to noindex/nofollow.

Personally I'm hugely annoyed by the category uncategorized that always gets indexed, I don't even use posts on most of my sites anymore, only pages, but that one category always stays, any easy way to get rid of it without having to noindex it?

You can make WP themes do whatever you want them to do. If you don't want a category slug in the URL, don't have a category.php file in the theme.

WP core files work on a hierarchy system, If one file isn't found, the core files revert to the next file in the hierarchy list.

The only files required in a WP theme are the two files below, everything else is optional:

style.css

index.php

WP is a CMS, it's all code, it does whatever anyone wants it to do.

Install WampServer on a PC & you can install Wordpress offline, makes it easy to test different things without a live site or a host. Works good for editing/developing WP themes.

Big thanks to that, always scared I would break a theme by removing such files.

It's still easy to break a file, even offline with WampServer. The good thing about offline editing themes is you can create as many copies of the theme as you want, edit, test it, make a backup copy, continue editing... Repeat as needed...

The offline process is way faster/easier than installing a theme on a live host.

Hmmm you say you have read and done a lot and then all you have done is "Install Yoast" and other bla bla bla...

And you still don't know how to create backlinks and you have read a lot about SEO ....

If you ask me bro, you have learnt absolutely nothing and spent time reading stuff which you were not.
Find a proper SEO guide and go through it to understand basics, then put things into practice and things should start happening ...

Without seeing your site its impossible to point out your weak spots, use catergories to make use navigation easy with structured data, dont worry about all the fluff of dropping the kw in every title and tag you can, ensure your content is relevant and deeply nested in your site. Ensure the front page is good looking and try and have as few boxes as possible. Make a link wheel of annoy ous social accounts, and use them to to send frequent social signals, you dont need to link every day from the same fb page though.

I am not saying any ones methods are correct or incorrect but the above method has been working well for me recently on a number of clients sites. One thing you can be sure of is Google wont peaniliase you for having to much social interaction!

Dang.. I thought I was good to go now that I Nondexed tags/categories to avoid dupes...

Guess now I am even more confused....

This SEO stuff sucks....

Just when you think you got one thing right...

Someone tells you it is wrong

So instead of going to the next step you start over with step 1

One day.... One day it will all come together.....NOT

Do you use a theme which uses an excerpt of posts on categories and tags?

If so you don't have a duplicate content issue to start with. Google is smart enough to realize your categories are just that, a way to categorize your content with a short excerpt of the main posts contents.

IF Google did decide categories are duplicate it would automatically choose the best version of the content and try to rank one of the webpages rather than both.

Because many money sites are static and do not need a cms at all much less the most targeted CMs on the planet.

Because in case where a CMS is not needed (and in many ways WP is still not a full CMS out the box) straight HTML will smoke anything else out there in speed.

Because over dependence on Wordpress has made marketers think notthing buy posting articles.

Because marketrs let Wordpress dictate how their sites will look and act rather than whats best to convert traffic.

Ok thanks for the answers. I can't say I disagree because I've only ever used WP, except for when I first started out and tried using Kompozer to put a site together. I've learnt a bit along the way about css etc but I never really looked at anything else other than WP when I first used it as it just seemed nice and easy and convenient.

I did have a look at some html templates on themeforest a couple weeks back but I wouldn't know where to start with them really, or maybe I would, but I haven't got the time to delve into it any deeper. Besides that I'm comfortable with using WP, mainly with Thesis skins and haven't had a problem with them converting traffic so far.

Ok thanks for the answers. I can't say I disagree because I've only ever used WP, except for when I first started out and tried using Kompozer to put a site together. I've learnt a bit along the way about css etc but I never really looked at anything else other than WP when I first used it as it just seemed nice and easy and convenient.

I did have a look at some html templates on themeforest a couple weeks back but I wouldn't know where to start with them really, or maybe I would, but I haven't got the time to delve into it any deeper. Besides that I'm comfortable with using WP, mainly with Thesis skins and haven't had a problem with them converting traffic so far.

I use WordPress for almost everything now, but Mike is right you can't beat a plain HTML page on speed and even SEO because you have full 100% control over everything, no issues with databases causing performance bottlenecks etc...

However, webmasters use CMS's to make tasks faster/easier. Picture trying to build a huge site with static HTML pages where when you add a new webpage you have to manually go in and edit dozens, hundreds of old webpages to add links to the new content (it's better SEO wise, but TIME consuming). This is all automated with WordPress, but at the cost of less flexibility.

I've spent years developing in WordPress and it's a brilliant tool, but it has it's problems. Swings and roundabouts, where you gain in one area you loose in another, trick is to reduce the areas you loose in.

If the Themeforest templates are for WordPress they aren't static HTML webpages, probably marketing terms to make them sound something special. Similar to terms like Web 2.0 and private blog network, makes something quite mundane sound special and worth paying a premium for.

If the Themeforest templates are for WordPress they aren't static HTML webpages, probably marketing terms to make them sound something special. Similar to terms like Web 2.0 and private blog network, makes something quite mundane sound special and worth paying a premium for.

Your quite mundane blabbing on and on makes you sound special and worth paying a premium for
(in your own mind anyways)

Most people use WP because most people have no knowledge of HTML. WP default themes are boring. Free templates are overused and boring. Themeforest templates look cool and awesome. Tis' all there is about it

I use WordPress for almost everything now, but Mike is right you can't beat a plain HTML page on speed and even SEO because you have full 100% control over everything, no issues with databases causing performance bottlenecks etc...

However, webmasters use CMS's to make tasks faster/easier. Picture trying to build a huge site with static HTML pages where when you add a new webpage you have to manually go in and edit dozens, hundreds of old webpages to add links to the new content (it's better SEO wise, but TIME consuming). This is all automated with WordPress, but at the cost of less flexibility.

I've spent years developing in WordPress and it's a brilliant tool, but it has it's problems. Swings and roundabouts, where you gain in one area you loose in another, trick is to reduce the areas you loose in.

If the Themeforest templates are for WordPress they aren't static HTML webpages, probably marketing terms to make them sound something special. Similar to terms like Web 2.0 and private blog network, makes something quite mundane sound special and worth paying a premium for.

David

They were html templates I was looking at, not WP templates because I don't want everything just using WP.

Originally Posted by jinx1221

Most people use WP because most people have no knowledge of HTML. WP default themes are boring. Free templates are overused and boring. Themeforest templates look cool and awesome. Tis' all there is about it

That's exactly why I started with WP just because it's pretty simple for somebody with minimal knowledge of html etc such as myself. I use a few themes from themeforest and they're not bad for making half decent looking sites, and pretty simple to use.

I am new to SEO, however as I mentioned I have read many articles on SEO optimization, I have done much more than just install Yoast.

This first thing I did was optimize my page for speed, its still not as fast as I would like but I don’t think I can get it any faster without using a CDN.

Every new article I post, I do the following:

Make sure my article title contain the keyword I am posting about.

Example

Title: Black cats are popular at Halloween
Keyword: Black Cat

P.S I really don’t talk or write about Black Cats.

Optimize images and ensure they have ALT tags. I also add descriptions to the images and make sure they contain my keyword.

Place H1 and H2 tags containing the keyword.

Ensure I write my article in a way that I can repeat my keyword multiple times without it impacting the reader experience.

Have inbound links to my relevant articles and outbound links to related websites.

I have NOT done this to all my articles just the latest ones to see if it would have an impact on ranking, and so far the new articles don’t rank any better than my old ones.

I notice other website in my niche that don’t do any of this, website layout is not as good neither is the content and the rank much better than me. Before you mentioned website AGE, some of these websites are newer than mine.

Is there anything I can do to optimize my articles, so that they rank better?

For the record page speed is such a small metric when ranking webpages it's almost irrelevant to SEO.

Obviously you don't want pages that take all day to load but don't dwell on the subject (page speed). You don't need to use any tool to measure common sense (page speed).

It's a small metric today (there's over 200 metrics, so no one metric is the be all and end all of SEO), but it's not to be ignored. Also most of the issues are easily solved, why would you run a site with images that haven't been optimized for speed when it's so easy to optimize images (especially easy with WordPress)?

Worst case scenario is your site runs faster/better and it's a fact if a site runs slow, users leave and that costs money in lost conversions! There are studies online about this, for big businesses with a lot of traffic (like Amazon) a 1 second delay could cost the business millions in lost sales. When I loaded the OP's site I tried loading an image on it's own (just a 150px wide image) and the connection timed out, also one of the webpages timed out: that will cost visitors.

Google looks set to take usability more into account in the future, with the release of the PageSpeed Insights tool which over the past 6 months the tests have got harder it looks like page speed and usability could become a major factor in the future.

It's a relatively new thing that Google can even check tap size targets and layouts taking CSS/Javascript into account. Would be short sighted to ignore page speed and usability.

It's a small metric today (there's over 200 metrics, so no one metric is the be all and end all of SEO), but it's not to be ignored. Also most of the issues are easily solved, why would you run a site with images that haven't been optimized for speed when it's so easy to optimize images (especially easy with WordPress)?

Worst case scenario is your site runs faster/better and it's a fact if a site runs slow, users leave and that costs money in lost conversions! There are studies online about this, for big businesses with a lot of traffic (like Amazon) a 1 second delay could cost the business millions in lost sales. When I loaded the OP's site I tried loading an image on it's own (just a 150px wide image) and the connection timed out, also one of the webpages timed out: that will cost visitors.

Google looks set to take usability more into account in the future, with the release of the PageSpeed Insights tool which over the past 6 months the tests have got harder it looks like page speed and usability could become a major factor in the future.

It's a relatively new thing that Google can even check tap size targets and layouts taking CSS/Javascript into account. Would be short sighted to ignore page speed and usability.

I could care less about checking page speed with any tool, still ranking pages based on common sense. Either the webpage loads in a browser or it takes all day. It's not rocket surgery.

Good luck with all that.

Rocket surgery, I like that :-)

Feel free to stay in the past, I'll move forward where Google appears to be heading and create sites that load fast and take mobile usability into account and since Google has given us a free tool the results of which are part of the ranking algo NOW I'm using it.

I don't care if it's a 1% factor or a 10% factor, most of it is low hanging SEO fruit (it's easy to achieve), be nuts not to grab it. My sites run fast now, I don't have to think about it anymore, moving on to harder SEO factors like building backlinks.

Feel free to stay in the past, I'll move forward where Google appears to be heading and create sites that load fast and take mobile usability into account and since Google has given us a free tool the results of which are part of the ranking algo NOW I'm using it.

I don't care if it's a 1% factor or a 10% factor, most of it is low hanging SEO fruit (it's easy to achieve), be nuts not to grab it. My sites run fast now, I don't have to think about it anymore, moving on to harder SEO factors like building backlinks.

Seriously it's not important enough to assume it will drop a page in the SERPs, it's just not going to happen for the average webpage. Again, I'm in no way suggesting to have a page that takes an hour to load in a browser.

Seriously it's not important enough to assume it will drop a page in the SERPs, it's just not going to happen for the average webpage. Again, I'm in no way suggesting to have a page that takes an hour to load in a browser.

Yes, page speed is an old metric, but usability isn't.

We have recent Google changes which means they can determine what a page looks like. Used to be a case all that matters was the basic HTML output, now we have to take into account how webpages behave. Are tap targets big enough, far enough a part to prevent tapping the wrong link, are fonts legible...

Based on one of your recent forum posts you still thought Google only looks at the HTML output. Since your info is way out of date it's clear you don't know what you are talking about on this point, you are guessing/hoping it's not very important (you might be right today, but why risk it?).

For the record I'm not saying if your website is the fastest in it's niche with 100/100 on mobile, usability and desktop on the page speed insights tool, it will mean you'll be number 1 for your hardest SERPs.

I'm saying this stuff is a Google ranking factor, just like the title tag is a ranking factor, the anchor text of backlinks are a ranking factor, the alt text of images are a ranking factor along with over 200 other ranking factors.... And it's dumb not to sort out page speed and usability when it is so easy to fix some of the issues presented by the free tool Google has given us to improve our websites.

I don't understand why with so much competition out there (and it's growing every day) anyone wouldn't take every tiny SEO benefit they can gain over their competitors, especially when it's easy.

We have recent Google changes which means they can determine what a page looks like. Used to be a case all that matters was the basic HTML output, now we have to take into account how webpages behave. Are tap targets big enough, far enough a part to prevent tapping the wrong link, are fonts legible...

Based on one of your recent forum posts you still thought Google only looks at the HTML output. Since your info is way out of date it's clear you don't know what you are talking about on this point, you are guessing/hoping it's not very important (you might be right today, but why risk it?).

For the record I'm not saying if your website is the fastest in it's niche with 100/100 on mobile, usability and desktop on the page speed insights tool, it will mean you'll be number 1 for your hardest SERPs.

I'm saying this stuff is a Google ranking factor, just like the title tag is a ranking factor, the anchor text of backlinks are a ranking factor, the alt text of images are a ranking factor along with over 200 other ranking factors.... And it's dumb not to sort out page speed and usability when it is so easy to fix some of the issues presented by the free tool Google has given us to improve our websites.

I don't understand why with so much competition out there (and it's growing every day) anyone wouldn't take every tiny SEO benefit they can gain over their competitors, especially when it's easy.

No one knows for sure what the list is exactly, if you read Google's info sites etc... they regularly confirm various ranking factors like speed, https etc...

So we only have some confirmed by Google employees.

David

Well that's the closest we've got to you admitting your out of your depth. It's a start.

You like everyone else around you, both misinterprets and misunderstands published information. Grasping possible SEO factors paraphrased from videos and in most cases, taken completely out of context and not researched any further.

I could go on for an hour explaining and citing exactly how it works but in short, and to keep it friendly and educational.

Page speed is more of a determining factor when all things are equal. It would rarely factor in a real world situation. Given the obvious exception of a total server side meltdown over a long period of time. Google is very happy to rank slow pages, and does so all day long.

And that's not disagreeing with you, in what you say about it's easy to fix so fix it. I try keep everything as fast as possible. But my decision on that was 100% weighted on the side of user experience. I like fast sites, and I expect everyone else does too. My site runs on a high spec dedi.

All you need worry about in essence is still the same as it always was.

Link Weight (Google Internal PR Scoring)
Relevance

Then there's a dwarfing gap between those 2 and the other 198. Most of which are either non equating or not factors at all. Just guest posts over at MOZ and QuickSprout.

Originally Posted by SEO-Dave

When did I say don't do that?

I was talking about reducing link benefit to webpages consisting of copied content (and unimportant content from an SEO perspective like a Privacy page) so the link benefit would be used on unique content that could generate SERPs.

If you reduce links to copied content that is less likely to rank, more link benefit goes to unique content that could rank. Linking from ranked pages to other related**, but not ranking pages is a good SEO technique.

** Best to keep links off a page related for the most part, if you start linking to pages about unrelated topics it can damage a pages current SERPs (anchor text off a page is very important IME).

Follow my advice on removing internal links to less important content and you have even more link benefit flowing into already ranked pages, which means when linking out there's even more SEO benefit passed.

David

Whats a privacy page?
And why does it need to be anywhere near the sites hierarchy of pages?
And why can't you just obfuscate that in script if your that paranoid?

Well that's the closest we've got to you admitting your out of your depth. It's a start.

You like everyone else around you, both misinterprets and misunderstands published information. Grasping possible SEO factors paraphrased from videos and in most cases, taken completely out of context and not researched any further.

I could go on for an hour explaining and citing exactly how it works but in short, and to keep it friendly and educational.

Page speed is more of a determining factor when all things are equal. It would rarely factor in a real world situation. Given the obvious exception of a total server side meltdown over a long period of time. Google is very happy to rank slow pages, and does so all day long.

And that's not disagreeing with you, in what you say about it's easy to fix so fix it. I try keep everything as fast as possible. But my decision on that was 100% weighted on the side of user experience. I like fast sites, and I expect everyone else does too. My site runs on a high spec dedi.

All you need worry about in essence is still the same as it always was.

Link Weight (Google Internal PR Scoring)
Relevance

Then there's a dwarfing gap between those 2 and the other 198. Most of which are either non equating or not factors at all. Just guest posts over at MOZ and QuickSprout.

Whats a privacy page?
And why does it need to be anywhere near the sites hierarchy of pages?
And why can't you just obfuscate that in script if your that paranoid?

Link sculpting or something, not my thing.

I could be a dick and turn your earlier words against you, remember when you said:

Care to list them for me? Citing your source.

I didn't see any sources in your ranking factors list :-)

I sort of agree with the essence of the main part of your argument, sort of.

Not much point having a super fast site, with awesome SEO'd content, everything perfectly crafted etc... IF the site has no backlinks.

So yes like for the past 10+ years it's still about the backlinks, not as much as it used to be, but still THE major factor with some added factors like quality of the site, age of links....

However, there are many things you can do on a site that wastes your valuable, hard earned link benefit. Nofollow, noindex, poorly optimized content, poorly thought out internal linking structure, lots of content that will never rank for anything which wastes link benefit etc, etc...

More of these things you get right, more work your backlinks can do for you.

You've made the mistake of assuming I don't do SEO tests and experiments, I do not rely on any information from forums, blogs, Moz etc... when deciding what's important SEO wise.

I work on the principle of try to confirm with tests (hundreds of tests), if I can't confirm tend towards what's good for usability and what Google has stated they want. Worst case scenario is you do some things that has no SEO value, but doesn't cause SEO damage either. If page speed wasn't a ranking factor, it's good for users, you tend to make more money when users are happy.

Privacy Policy page, supposed to have one to comply with ad networks like Google AdSense.

However, there are many things you can do on a site that wastes your valuable, hard earned link benefit. Nofollow, noindex, poorly optimized content, poorly thought out internal linking structure, lots of content that will never rank for anything which wastes link benefit etc, etc...

Thankfully for me that's called "Link Sculpting" which is not a ranking factor. That's just an internal manipulation of external "Ranking Factors" Like Links and Relevance.

First thing I noticed there's 39,000 pages indexed in Google (check Google Webmaster Tools for an accurate figure). Checked some articles out and wasn't sure they are unique, is some of your content scraped (copied) from other sites? That's a lot of content for one year.

If so that could be a major cause of poor rankings. Google does not like sites that copy content.

A lot of the indexed pages are image attachments, so not sure of how many articles you've posted. Could be using a lot of internal link benefit linking to image attachment URLs which don't generate traffic.

Home page you have internal nofollow links (the "Continue Reading" links) that wastes link benefit.

Your home page title isn't very good. Note you are number one in Google for both parts of your title (brand name | keyphrase), the first part is your brand name which is unique, search for it in Google and see how Google shows this:

That's because your brand name isn't a keyphrase, but an important keyword to your site with another word added directly to it. Google can't parse Keyword from KeywordWord, you are optimized for KeywordWord which has no traffic.

Add the space to your brand name and you benefit from the keyword. Don't change anything about what you offer etc... just add a space wherever you use your brand name as text. No users will notice the difference, but Google will.

Search for your posts title tags in Google and the long ones I checked tended to see you ranking top 10. Didn't check many, but your article titles aren't very targeted at SERPs with traffic. If you generate a lot of content and don't optimize for at least one SERP each you are highly unlikely to generate traffic to a new post. Basically if you give a post a title and no one searches for main phrases in the title, it can't generate traffic.

Use tools like the Adwords keyword planner tool to target new articles at SERPs, if you are generating thousands of posts a year I suggest choosing one long tail SERP per post. Even a 100 posts each targeting one SERP each with just 30 searches a month each could be a significant share of 30,000 visitors a month. Right now looks like most of your articles will generate no traffic.

Go through your PageSpeed Insights issues and fix as many as you can. A lot are a combination of the WordPress theme you use and adding large images to articles. If you limit images to 500px wide (as shown on the webpage, you can still link to large versions) you'll remove the Optimize Images issues. If you haven't ready done so use a plugin like EWWW Image Optimizer to optimize your images.

The above won't be a main cause of poor rankings, but won't help.

If your site is around a year old any links you've added recently won't be passing full SEO benefit. Takes a long time for links to pass significant SEO benefit, it's why new sites tend not to rank for at least 6 months and most don't rank for anything competitive in their first year.

Keep building quality backlinks and be patient. IME take 9-12 months for a new link to pass most of it's SEO benefit, so if you've been regularly acquiring new links, because the site is new it won't have benefited from most of the links yet.

Knew I should have checked the domain age. The domain was registered Feb 2012, so if you started work on the site from day one it's 2 1/2 years old. WayBack Machine was playing up, so couldn't check when you started building the site. PR1 home page, so December 2013 (when PR was last updated) suggests you hadn't built much in the way of quality links by 12 months ago.

Thank-you David, I will apply your suggestions. BTW, it not copied content, it's press releases from industry that you notice. I never copy content.

If you use press releases it is copied content.

Although you aren't scraping content off sites, you are using content loads of other sites will use which at best puts you in direct competition with those webpages (why should yours rank first above others?) and at worst Google sees your content as a copy and won't rank it high.

If the latter occurs you damage your domains Google trust, if most of your content is copied content, it shouldn't be trusted as a source of unique high quality content: It's hard to say exactly how Google determines trust in a domain, best to play it safe on important sites.

If you use a lot of copied content you are using a lot of your internal link benefit (you are linking to it internally) to keep it indexed, which means your unique content will receive less link benefit and so will be less likely to rank high. Means you have to work even harder on backlinks because you use so much of your internal links on copied content.

Basically using copied content even if you aren't directly penalized for using it by Google is shooting yourself in the foot, it tends to be content you'll have difficulty generating SERPs for. Why would your copy of a press release rank above the 100+ other domains with more authority/trust than your domain that has the same content? Check Google Webmaster Tools, do the copied press releases generate traffic in their own right, is it worth having them on the site?

I use a lot of public domain content (no copyright issues) so as it's public domain the only issue is ranking directly against others who use the same content, so no duplicate content issues (no one owns PD content, Google doesn't penalize for legally using content). So similar to what you do, but no duplicate content issues, there tends to be a lot of competition because the content can be used legally by anyone, so requires more backlinks than trying to rank unique content.

On backlinks there isn't any easy answer or one answer. What would persuade you to link to a competitors site or an unrelated site?

Hi, you should use the light weight images with proper details i.e. you must give alt, desc, caption to all of the images you are using in your Wordpress site. This will be adding values towards search engine crawling process.

Use a service like AHREFS to create backlink reports for all your competitors. Find out where all your competitors are getting backlinks from and try to replicate as many as possible.

If you replicate backlinks from 10 different competitors, you should come out in front.

Also, if you are doing video marketing I suggest that you take those videos you post to YouTube, and re-post them to various other video hosting sites (Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc) and use keyword variations of your title on each one.

Additionally, you can then rip the audio from your videos and upload them to audio sharing websites using different variations of the title text again, as described above.

Our website is broken down 50/50. 50% original content and 50% press releases. I have no choice but to share the information in the press releases as our partners/sponsors/advertiser expect us to do so, no real choice in the matter.

Also, they do generate traffic to an extent. I noticed that if I am first in my niche to post them, I will rank above others and they will generate hits.

My big problem as you can image is there is lots of competition in my niche and we all share the same keywords and very similar page titles, there lies the problem!

Our website is broken down 50/50. 50% original content and 50% press releases. I have no choice but to share the information in the press releases as our partners/sponsors/advertiser expect us to do so, no real choice in the matter.

Also, they do generate traffic to an extent. I noticed that if I am first in my niche to post them, I will rank above others and they will generate hits.

My big problem as you can image is there is lots of competition in my niche and we all share the same keywords and very similar page titles, there lies the problem!

Fully understand the SEO issue.

IF your unique content tends to generate more traffic I'd attempt to funnel link benefit away from the copied content to the unique content.

I didn't look how you organised your site, if all the press releases are in the same categories you could attempt to not have those categories link as part of any sitewide categories widget. This would reduce the amount of link benefit flowing into the press release categories and increase link benefit flowing into the categories that hold unique content.

If you mix your copied and unique content together that won't work. The concept is to reduce internal links to less important (lower traffic) content and increase links to important content.

On my SEO site for example I have a privacy policy page, most sites would add a sitewide link to it, my site only loads to it from the home page (footer link). Means I don't waste lots of internal link benefit linking to a page that will never generate traffic.

When adding press releases you could only add them to one category and no tags, this would limit how much link benefit they receive.

I regularly look at my highest traffic pages and make sure they get more internal links so they remain ranking high. You can generate significantly more traffic quickly pushing a SERP from top 5 to top 3 to number 1 than always chasing new SERPs.

I regularly look at my highest traffic pages and make sure they get more internal links so they remain ranking high. You can generate significantly more traffic quickly pushing a SERP from top 5 to top 3 to number 1 than always chasing new SERPs.

David

Have you ever heard of the "ranking pages, help rank pages" factor?

I'd do the opposite to you, and have my strongest pages rank other weaker internal pages. That gives me multiple SERPs for multiple pages for same keywords.

I'd do the opposite to you, and have my strongest pages rank other weaker internal pages. That gives me multiple SERPs for multiple pages for same keywords.

When did I say don't do that?

I was talking about reducing link benefit to webpages consisting of copied content (and unimportant content from an SEO perspective like a Privacy page) so the link benefit would be used on unique content that could generate SERPs.

If you reduce links to copied content that is less likely to rank, more link benefit goes to unique content that could rank. Linking from ranked pages to other related**, but not ranking pages is a good SEO technique.

** Best to keep links off a page related for the most part, if you start linking to pages about unrelated topics it can damage a pages current SERPs (anchor text off a page is very important IME).

Follow my advice on removing internal links to less important content and you have even more link benefit flowing into already ranked pages, which means when linking out there's even more SEO benefit passed.

I have been running my website for about one year and I am fed-up of my terrible page ranking.

I have read allot about SEO, most I understood and some not so much. I will elaborate below all the changes I have done to date. Even with all the changes I have done below, my page rankings and site traffic is still horrible!

I run a Wordpress website, so for Wordpress I have done the following:

• Installed Yoast WPSEO. I have read numerous articles and watched countless videos, I am confident that I have the upmost configuration.
• I have installed a SEO image optimizer.
• Yoast Google analytics, also installed.

To improve page speed, I have:

• I have installed an image compressor.
• I have installed a caching program
• I have installed a database optimizer.

The only thing I haven't done to improve page speed is signup for a CDN.

As far as content is concerned, I produce good content and use Yoast to use the correct keywords for my content. I add content to my website on a daily basis.

I share my content on Social medias, Facebook, Twitter, Google+

I have a personal and business page for Facebook, Twitter and Google+

This leads me to backlinks! I know this plays a major role, however I don't know how to proceed to create good Backlinks.

I could really use and would definitely appreciate your comments and guidance; to be honest I think I was getting better page ranking with a vanilla installation of Wordpress.

Starting to get a clearer picture, I think, maybe, well sort of. Fortunate for me is that my website is fairly well organized separating unique content from press releases via different categories. Also I don’t mix up the 2, example will not link an industry news article to an original content article. However I do use similar keyword structure, no choice in that.

I am also starting to understand the importance of inter linking original content, if of course its relevant, something I do not do a the moment.

However here is my question. A press release comes out, everyone in my niche jumps on the bandwagon to post it on there website. They know that since its hot industry news in my niche, readers of this product will be flocking to there website to read up on this new model. (thus generating more traffic )

So doesn’t this content (press releases) play an important factor for my website and although it’s a copied page using your terminology, shouldn’t this page be considered important?

So doesn't this content (press releases) play an important factor for my website and although it's a copied page using your terminology, shouldn't this page be considered important?

That's for you to determine based on how much traffic they generate relative to unique content.

You should have picked up from what I wrote that because a lot of people use the same content it's harder to rank. If you are able to rank it before others it's a valuable source of traffic, BUT if you find your copy of the content rarely if ever generates traffic it's draining your internal link benefit away from unique content that's more likely to generate traffic for no gain.

Most webmasters don't realise as they add new content to a site they are damaging the SEO of the current contents SERPs, because the link benefit has to be spread thinner.

Also there's the trust factor, using a lot of copied content puts you on iffy ground, more unique your content, less likely your domain won't be trusted. If all you posted was press releases with no added value (adding your own spin on a press release like adding your view on what the press release is about could be added value), highly unlikely to be considered an authority in your niche.

You need to look at both short term and long term traffic trends. If you get a press release posted and it generates a fair amount of traffic for a few weeks and then drains away to nothing, there's no reason to keep the content well linked long term (you had the traffic, move on). If you had a press release about the "iPhone 3 New Features" you can see once the iPhone 3 was released and definitely when the iPhone 4 was released, that page is highly unlikely to generate as much traffic.

More links to content that ranks, less to content that doesn't rank because it's out of date, too many other sites are ranking above you for old press releases... I was looking at someones site and they have one article that consistently generates over half a million visitors a month, that page should have a sitewide internal link to protect it's traffic. Look at my jokes site in my sig, the top navigation menu links go to some of my top traffic pages, I'm making sure they have a decent amount of internal link benefit (can't pass more than a sitewide internal link) to protect the traffic long term.

Most of this is commonsense internal linking, every time you link to something it uses link benefit that's not available to power the rest of your site. Now if you are awesome at building backlinks it doesn't matter that much, but if like most webmasters you struggle gaining quality backlinks you have to treat your acquired link benefit like gold dust, don't waste it.

Some would argue to delete content that doesn't generate traffic and 301 redirect to the most relevant post, I either re-purpose the page (update it, add something that can rank) or try to pull it out of the linking structure. If it has no internal links it isn't costing you any link benefit.

Most webmasters don't realise as they add new content to a site they are damaging the SEO of the current contents SERPs, because the link benefit has to be spread thinner.

The problem isn't spreading internal links too thin.

The problem is a typical blog rolls older content/links off the Home page as new content/post are added to the domain. That can be corrected with a static Home page.

Typically a Home page is one of the strongest pages on a domain, that happens because most inbound links are pointing at the domain.com URL (happens even with organic links). That stronger dynamic Home page that typically includes a blog post title/snippet is also the reason a lot of times it can overpower a new internal page/post in Google SERPs (new/weak page with no inbound links).

Yet another reason I always stress the importance of having good site structure.

The problem is a typical blog rolls older content/links off the Home page as new content/post are added to the domain. That can be corrected with a static Home page.

Typically a Home page is one of the strongest pages on a domain, that happens because most inbound links are pointing at the domain.com URL (happens even with organic links). That stronger dynamic Home page that typically includes a blog post title/snippet is also the reason a lot of times it can overpower a new internal page/post in Google SERPs (new/weak page with no inbound links).

Yet another reason I always stress the importance of having good site structure.

Although a lot of what you say above is sort of true, how the home page links to the latest 10 posts isn't as important as how much link benefit generally flows through a site to the important posts/articles.

Your average blog will have 10 archived posts on the home page and maybe a sitewide recent posts widget, so you are only discussing the links to 10 pages on a site by switching from archive home page to static home page. Even then if the site has a recent posts widget those links will still exist on the home page and still roll off as new posts are posted.

The links to recent posts is useful for quick indexing, but from a long term ranking perspective they change every time a new post is published, so can't be relied upon for passing link benefit long term.

I use siloed recent posts widget and popular posts widgets (siloed based on categories) which means the links change less often, the recent posts within a specific category could be stable for months. On my jokes site (sig link) I just use a siloed popular posts widget which loads the most popular 50 posts (popularity based on comment count) from the category a post is in. If you view the SEO Jokes page the Popular Jokes widget loads up to 50 posts from the technology jokes category. Means the links are generally relevant and all the posts in that category get a lot of related internal links.

With your average WordPress setup most link benefit flows into the category archives because most sites have a sitewide categories widget. The categories and tags spread the link benefit through the site to the posts. How much link benefit a specific post receives via links from categories/tags is dependant on factors including how many categories/tags, how many posts per category.

If all categories/tags have exactly 10 posts all posts will receive the same amount of link benefit. If some categories have 50 posts, the posts on category pages 2, 3, 4 and 5 will receive significantly less link benefit than a category with only 10 posts.

If there's a static homepage, because like Yukon said anything linked from it will gain some more link benefit (home pages tend to generate most backlinks). Any pages linked from sitewide widgets, navigation menus will receive maximum internal link benefit. If something is really important,link sitewide.

So there's a lot you can do to sculpt how link benefit (PR) flows through a site, exactly what you should do depends on the site. I try to keep categories with relatively low numbers of posts each (10 or less is best, though my silo setup makes this less of an issue). If a page is super important it gets a sitewide link, if a page is unimportant (privacy policy for example) I'll avoid a sitewide link.

Unless it's a small site you can't sitewide everything, so target what can generate most traffic/money.

I keep track of traffic and add more links to pages that are generating traffic to protect the traffic and gain more traffic. If you have traffic from a top 5 SERP you'll gain significantly more traffic when it's top 3.

Although a lot of what you say above is sort of true, how the home page links to the latest 10 posts isn't as important as how much link benefit generally flows through a site to the important posts/articles.

Your average blog will have 10 archived posts on the home page and maybe a sitewide recent posts widget, so you are only discussing the links to 10 pages on a site by switching from archive home page to static home page. Even then if the site has a recent posts widget those links will still exist on the home page and still roll off as new posts are posted.

The links to recent posts is useful for quick indexing, but from a long term ranking perspective they change every time a new post is published, so can't be relied upon for passing link benefit long term.

I use siloed recent posts widget and popular posts widgets (siloed based on categories) which means the links change less often, the recent posts within a specific category could be stable for months. On my jokes site (sig link) I just use a siloed popular posts widget which loads the most popular 50 posts (popularity based on comment count) from the category a post is in. If you view the SEO Jokes page the Popular Jokes widget loads up to 50 posts from the technology jokes category. Means the links are generally relevant and all the posts in that category get a lot of related internal links.

With your average WordPress setup most link benefit flows into the category archives because most sites have a sitewide categories widget. The categories and tags spread the link benefit through the site to the posts. How much link benefit a specific post receives via links from categories/tags is dependant on factors including how many categories/tags, how many posts per category.

If all categories/tags have exactly 10 posts all posts will receive the same amount of link benefit. If some categories have 50 posts, the posts on category pages 2, 3, 4 and 5 will receive significantly less link benefit than a category with only 10 posts.

If there's a static homepage, because like Yukon said anything linked from it will gain some more link benefit (home pages tend to generate most backlinks). Any pages linked from sitewide widgets, navigation menus will receive maximum internal link benefit. If something is really important,link sitewide.

So there's a lot you can do to sculpt how link benefit (PR) flows through a site, exactly what you should do depends on the site. I try to keep categories with relatively low numbers of posts each (10 or less is best, though my silo setup makes this less of an issue). If a page is super important it gets a sitewide link, if a page is unimportant (privacy policy for example) I'll avoid a sitewide link.

Unless it's a small site you can't sitewide everything, so target what can generate most traffic/money.

I keep track of traffic and add more links to pages that are generating traffic to protect the traffic and gain more traffic. If you have traffic from a top 5 SERP you'll gain significantly more traffic when it's top 3.

David

Recent post links is a horrible idea for SEO & has literally nothing to do with a silo. It's the opposite of a silo.

If I had to have something like recent post for traffic it would be wrapped in an iframe just to get Google to ignore the links. Probably even slap a nofollow on them.

The links to recent posts is useful for quick indexing, but from a long term ranking perspective they change every time a new post is published, so can't be relied upon for passing link benefit long term.

Great for quick indexing, awful for ranking. As you said, links that do not change are better than transient links.

No problem with the iFrame technique, use it myself for social media profile links, for example on the Stallion site the social media links on the right hand side are in an iFrame and on WordPress posts the social media links within the author biography box are also in an iFrame. By using an iFrame the content isn't on the webpage so has no direct SEO impact: I don't want to waste link benefit linking to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc... so put the links in iFrames.

NEVER use nofollow for internal links, how can you not get it deletes link benefit. The nofollow info has been available since 2008/2009, you should know this, it's basic SEO 101. If I need a link not followed I use a CSS/javascript technique which turns content within a span tag into a clickable link. I also use the same technique to automatically convert nofollow links into the CSS/javascript span tag links.

Like I said I use an advanced silo technique which means the recent posts are based on the category, which means they don't change that often. Go look through my Stallion site at various posts in different categories and see how the recent posts links changes for each category. For example the oldest recent post in the SEO tutorial category is dated from June 8th this year. There's only 2 posts not listed on the recent posts widget :-)

Your problem is you don't understand the level of SEO I'm doing, I use multiple SEO techniques you've probably never heard of. You still use nofollow, that's so pre 2008 it's scary out of date. You should read my SEO tutorial with an open mind, you might gain some useful SEO techniques.

Next you'll be saying you use the keywords meta tag as well, please tell me you don't, there's no hope for anyone who does that in 2014, that's not worked for over 10 years!

NEVER use nofollow for internal links, how can you not get it deletes link benefit. The nofollow info has been available since 2008/2009, you should know this, it's basic SEO 101. If I need a link not followed I use a CSS/javascript technique which turns content within a span tag into a clickable link. I also use the same technique to automatically convert nofollow links into the CSS/javascript span tag links.

Bah..., nonsense.

You guys and your nofollow voodoo, give me a break. Don't be so paranoid, do some real world testing.

Nofollow has no negative impact on a domain.

Obviously you missed the point on the iframe/nofollow comment earlier, the point was those recent post links are junking up a site.

Like I don't know about javascript links, read my old comments on the forum...

You guys and your nofollow voodoo, give me a break. Don't be so paranoid, do some real world testing.

Nofollow has no negative impact on a domain.

Obviously you missed the point on the iframe/nofollow comment earlier, the point was those recent post links are junking up a site.

Like I don't know about javascript links, read my old comments on the forum...

Bah..., half a decade out of date SEO advice.

Nofollow deletes link benefit, this has been confirmed by Matt Cutts unless you can explain how PR points (as he describes PR) flowing benefit from a page can half by using nofollow and that isn't deleting link benefit?

What I don't understand as it's relatively easy to replace nofollow links for alternatives that pass no SEO benefit (like a nofollow link), but doesn't delete link benefit (unlike a nofollow link) why you'd still use nofollow? Why risk it???

I could take a WordPress site and in 5 minutes convert all nofollow links to css/javascript powered 'links' which are treated as plain text by Google: Google treats them exactly the same in ranking terms as a nofollow link, but doesn't delete the link benefit.

First, let me thank all of you for your advice. Following this advice, my ranking have improved somewhat. I appear in the first 5 pages with most of my content. Much better than it used to be.

Images, index or not?

I have Yoast setup not to include media images/galleries in the sitemap, is this good or bad?

thank-you.

It's not bad.

A sitemap is just another way for Google to find your content, but IME it won't increase rankings.

Been running an SEO test on webpages that aren't linked from anywhere other than an XML sitemap (so only one way for Google to easily find them).

The SEO test is to see if there's any traffic value in having webpages on a site with no internal links that are found by Google via the XML sitemap.

If webpages will rank with no internal links (no links at all) it's a way to generate traffic with no link benefit cost.

I used comments for this test, my comments are accessible as individual webpages, if a comment has a lot of text it also generates an internal link as well (just one link), if the comment is short there's no link generated, but the webpage still exists.

So I have a nice test set of webpages, some with one internal link some with none. Both sets are linked from the XML sitemap.

I looked at comments with a similar character count, so the results could be compared (no point comparing one webpage with 5 words and the other with 500). The test set was around 400 characters of comment body text (there is more content on each webpage, but that's the cut off point for the internal links).

So far what I've found is both types of webpages are found and indexed by Google, but in general only the comments with the internal links generate SERPs. I have top 3 long tail SERPs like

From indexed comments with just one internal link (hundreds of SERPs like these). They are ranked mostly due to very basic on-page SEO like the title tags.

XML sitemap good for getting pages indexed, no use for ranking purposes per se, you still need links to the content.

If I recall correctly Yoast sitemap links to the attachment page of images, these are webpages not unlike the comments I'm testing. At best they'll have one internal link, just like my larger comments. At worst they won't be linked just like my small comments (depends on how you add images to a post).

I don't see any harm** in adding them to an XML sitemap, will give Google another way to find them. If you do tend to link to the attachment URLs on your posts, they could rank for whatever title tags those pages have, if no links it's another way for Google to index images at no direct SEO cost to you.

** Only possible harm is Google has more things to spider via your sitemap, so more important content could take longer to be found via the sitemap. So set the priority low.

Image search is different to websearch, you don't have to directly link to an image (doesn't need a clickable image link) for Google to index. All images with format img src=" HTML format can be indexed by Google, so this would be another way for Google to find your images.

Nofollow deletes link benefit, this has been confirmed by Matt Cutts unless you can explain how PR points (as he describes PR) flowing benefit from a page can half by using nofollow and that isn't deleting link benefit?

What I don't understand as it's relatively easy to replace nofollow links for alternatives that pass no SEO benefit (like a nofollow link), but doesn't delete link benefit (unlike a nofollow link) why you'd still use nofollow? Why risk it???

I could take a WordPress site and in 5 minutes convert all nofollow links to css/javascript powered 'links' which are treated as plain text by Google: Google treats them exactly the same in ranking terms as a nofollow link, but doesn't delete the link benefit.

David

Dave, step away from the cough syrup.

Your not comprehending my original point & twisting the subject to complete nonsense.

My original point was (still is) recent post links are junking up site structure.

...........................

Please don't reply because this is getting old, over and over and over...

But, but I like cough syrup :-)

OK, let's analyze your argument on the recent posts widget.

If you nofollow a recent posts widget with say 10 recent posts, that's 10 sitewide links which delete link benefit. If your average page has 100 links in total, that's around 10% of the internal link benefit wasted nofollowing the recent posts links.

Nofollow links do not pass any SEO benefit to the page linked to, Google might follow the links (so might result in faster indexing), but it won't pass SEO benefit. That's no link benefit (PR passed) and no anchor text benefit passed to the linked to page.

It's not completely clear if Google treats the anchor text of the nofollow link as anchor text or basic body text with regards the page the links are on (difficult to test, I've tried). The anchor text is definitely treated as body text (Google indexes it and counts it at least as body text on the page the link is on: have some live public SEO tests on my site). I think the nofollow anchor text is treated as body text, if your goal is to protect a silo structure by nofollowing you might protect the silo link structure by not having unrelated anchor text, but you are still adding unrelated body text in it's place still damaging the silo (not as bad, but still damage). And to achieve this you've deleted important link benefit, it's not worth it!

Never nofollow internal links.

As you suggested if you want a recent posts widget for users, but not for SEO silo reasons an iFrame is a solution: been using that concept for over 10 years. Don't think I've seen a WordPress theme which can put the recent posts widget in an iFrame, that would be a useful SEO feature, will have to see if I can develop it.

I assume your reasoning of not using recent posts widgets is the links are not always relevant to all silos within a site. Let's say you have 5 silos you'll be adding the wrong links to all 5 silos.

Consider I don't use sitewide recent posts widgets, I use siloed recent post widgets which only link to the recent pots in one or a small set of categories so the recent posts widget strengthens the silo. If I have a silo targeting SEO Expert type SERPs all the recent posts listed in the recent posts widget will be related to SEO Expert SERPs. I get the best of both worlds, users have a recent posts widget, but it only links to posts in the same silo.

BTW if you want to end a discussion, stop responding, you don't get the results you want by asking others to stop responding!

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